We are thankful for...

The turkey has been cooked, eaten, and put away for leftovers. Bread was baked, stuffing stuffed, potatoes mashed, squash roasted, onions creamed, pies pecaned and appled and pumpkined. Wine was uncorked, and cider was drunk, and stories were told and laughs were laughed. And then dishes were done, and polished silver was put away for another festive meal, and serving dishes were tucked carefully back into the cabinets until company comes the next time, and linens that so recently were freshly pressed were balled up at the bottom of the stairs, ready to go upstairs to be laundered anew.

We were all thankful for each other, and the meal and the privilege we share to live in a place of abundance, peace and prosperity, a point driven home by events in Darfur, and more recently by events in Mumbai.

We also picked up a stray (one of Tasha's associates at work), which we seem to do with regularity each Thanksgiving, and she fit right in. It made me happy that we could be that kind of family, the one who always has room for one more at the table. It was the way my mother's table was when she was alive, and I think she would have been proud of us today.

I missed her a great deal today. Still, I am thankful for the example that she and my father showed me. It seems to have stood me in good stead all these years later.

Brevity is...wit

Hemingway wrote what he touted as the world's shortest short story:  "Baby shoes for sale; never used."  Since then, Wired magazine has periodically sponsored contests for others to match Hemingway.  A propos of nothing, the other day, I had an epiphany for a series of political pot-boilers, in six words each.  

So, without further ado, my publishing debut:

"Voted for Bush, twice. My bad."

And now, the sequel:

"Did penance.  Voted for Barack Obama."

[I hasten to add that the first is a work of fiction.  The second is based on the fictional premise of the first novel in the series, although the second sentence is autobiographical.]

That's What I Said!

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Accordingly, we in Laboville would like to give a hat tip and a sincere thank you to the pranksters who this week mocked up a copy of the New York Times's July 4, 2009 edition, presumably to commemorate Barack Obama's election and the promise of better times ahead. [Link]

Here is what the pranksters published:

And here's the image from my family's 2006 holiday card, drawn by yours truly:

I would like to say, officially, that I am flattered.

Are You Smarter than a Twelfth Grader?

There are lots of reasons to stay in school, and apparently, the ability to read this blog is one of them.  On a lark, I submitted Laboville for a "readability evaluation" courtesy of Juicy Studio.  [link].  The evaluation software "reads" a website and applies various algorithms to determine how "readable" it is.  The tests measure different factors, but all of them rely to some degree on the number of words in a sentence and the number of syllables in each word.  

The result is a number that is both meaningful and meaningless.  Meaningful in the sense that it gives some indication whether the language itself is accessible and at what level, but meaningless in the sense that "readability" is about both the language used and the concept being expressed, and these algorithms ignore the second part.

With all of that in mind, here are the results:

On the Gunning-Fog Index, Laboville rates a 12.43, which means you need that number of years of schooling to understand the language used here.  By comparison, the Wall Street Journal typically scores around 11, and the Times (London) scores around 14.  The Bible comes in at about 6.

On the Flesch Reading Ease scale, Laboville scored a 59.86 out of 100, with 100 being more readable, and 0 being less readable.  According to the description accompanying the results, writers should strive for results between 60 and 70, so Laboville is close to the statistically optimal range.

On the Flesch-Kincaid grade level, Laboville rates an 8.93, which means that the average ninth grader should be able to read and understand the text.

Two observations:  First, just for the sake of comparison, I tested several Supreme Court decisions for readability, and found that on average, they scored about a 10th Grade reading level on the Gunning-Fog index, and a reading ease score of approximately 59-62.  In an admittedly unscientific survey, I found that Justice Scalia scored the highest grade level of the current members of the Court, while Justice Thomas scored  the lowest (insert joke here).  Yet even there, Justice Scalia tended to score in the 10-11th grade level.

Second, I share Juicy Studio's sense of irony that the word "monosyllabic" has five syllables.

That was the week that was...

It has now been a week since Barack Obama became our president-elect.  Something about the last week of news coverage and punditry brought to mind, perhaps cynically, Tom Lehrer's "National Brotherhood Week."  There's something about conservatives, teeth gritted, smiles forced, saying nice things about the President-elect that makes me think that they're doing it only because they know they have to, not because they believe it, and that they're just waiting for the moment when they can snidely say "I told you so."  (What it is they told me so about, I'm not altogether sure.  It's just a feeling, after all.)  Suddenly, I just started humming the song...

Anyway, here are the lyrics.  Draw your own conclusions.

National Brotherhood Week (Music and Lyrics by Tom Lehrer)

On the white folks hate the black folks

and the black folks hate the white folks.

To hate all but the right folks 

is an old established rule.

But during National Brotherhood Week, 

National Brotherhood Week,

Lena Horne and Sheriff Clarke are dancing cheek-to-cheek.

It's fun to eulogize

the people you despise

as long as you don't let them in your school.

Oh the poor folks hate the rich folks

and the rich folks hate the poor folks.

All of my folks hate all of your folks

It's American as apple pie.

But during National Brotherhood Week,

National Brotherhood Week,

New Yorkers love the Puerto Ricans

'cause it's very chic

Stand up and take the hand

of someone you can't stand.

You can tolerate him if you try.

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics

and the Catholics hate the Protestants,

And the Hindus hate the Muslims,

And everybody hates the Jews.

But during National Brotherhood Week,

National Brotherhood Week,

It's national everyone-smile-at-one-another-hood week.

Be nice to people who

are inferior to you.

It's only for a week, so have no fear.

Be grateful that it doesn't last all year!